Manufacturing defects are a normal occurrence in the fabrication of integrated circuits (ICs). These defects can be caused by particulates and/or other irregularities associated with IC fabrication. Defects can occur before an IC is tested or packaged, and that is most frequently the case. However, defects known as “infant mortality” can also occur during test and burn-in. Infant mortality is often associated with IC structures that were marginally created (such as narrow metal lines or via tear-drop voids, for example). Defects can also occur from using an IC in an extreme condition. Examples include excessive use, voltage transients, electro-static discharge, non-infant-mortality effects such as hot-electrons or negative bias temperature instability, oxide damage, or radiation damage (such as spaced-based alpha, gamma, or cosmic rays).
In order to effect use of redundant components for repair of a regular structure, such as a memory device, for example, static random access memory (SRAM), steering of read, write, or other operations away from the bad component and to the good component is implemented. A common conventional method of steering has been to use a multiplexor and demultiplexor (MUX and DEMUX) to direct operations away from the bad components and to the good components. One common steering approach is to use a “nearest neighbor” approach, which requires the insertion of circuitry associated with rows or columns, and can therefore negatively impact performance, area, or complexity of implementation of the memory device.